Alabama Hills Morning

The Alabama Hills is a favorite location of mine that is helped me with my year goal of shooting a whole lot more. I’ve been here every hour of the day with none being the same, none being better then the other. This morning I raced down to the hills when I saw the weather. Storms racing over the Sierra make for amazing mornings at the Hills and this day was no different!

The one thing the uninitiated wouldn’t know about shooting in these kinds of storms is the light changes FAST! The sun started to pop far off in the east which is the top frame. The storm was dropping moisture but it wasn’t reaching the ground giving the light a great prism to spread its warmth. But within minutes with the earth’s rotation the color was gone (bottom image). Knowing this was coming, I was shooting with two bodies. One D3x had the 14-24AFS and the other the 24-70AFS (with 2 stop circular split grad attached). I did this because as the light changed, I could go from long to wide if needed. In this case, I shot it all with the 24-20AFS. The other trap of the Alabama Hills is while the light sucks you to look east, a whole lot of amazing can be happening to the west.